GOPers Need to Let Go of Ayn Rand

I always thought it was cool to hurl stinging insults at my political opponents, to sulk peevishly when my side lost an election and to gloat loudly when we won. But I'm over that now.

By Robert L. Moore

I always thought it was cool to hurl stinging insults at my political opponents, to sulk peevishly when my side lost an election and to gloat loudly when we won. But I'm over that now.

Herewith is my New Year's Resolution: I will from this day forth strive to encourage bipartisanship and generosity of spirit in all matters political.

However, I am hoping I can get some of my Republican friends to make a resolution that will make things easier for me — namely this: My Dear GOPers, I beseech you, please resolve to let go of your Ayn Rand fetish.

Ayn Rand, it seems, has been lurking in the background behind countless Republican candidates over the past few decades and her influence on them has been anything but good. Ronald Reagan once wrote in a letter that he admired Ayn Rand. His tax cuts for the rich certainly bear that out.

Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan famously said, "The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand." Ryan has since tried to put some distance between himself and Rand, since, as a Catholic, he found her atheism an inconvenient truth. But, while rejecting her atheism, he has clung to her essential philosophy — a philosophy of extreme selfishness.

Rand is most famous for writing a couple of best-selling novels, "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead" which remind me of the Twilight series in terms of their appeal. They are intoxicating to a certain kind of adolescent, but most English teachers regard them as schlocky.

Here is their gist: "Atlas Shrugged" is based on the premise that Americans, for the most part, are a bunch of losers. If the brainy genius types (among whom Ayn Rand included herself) withdraw their participation in the American economy, the entire system will collapse because the bulk of us don't know what we're doing.

"The Fountainhead" has a similar theme. It is the story of Howard Roark, a brave, handsome and sexy architect who represents all that is superior in human nature. Roark thumbs his nose at the rest of us idiots by dynamiting a building that he himself designed.

His reason for this violence? People less clever than he dared to modify his architectural plan when they built it. Toward the end of the novel, Roark makes a dramatic courtroom speech in which he explains that geniuses such as himself (and, we must understand, Ayn Rand) are so dadburn superior to normal citizens that when they do something brilliant such as design a building (or write "Atlas Shrugged"), inferior mortals everywhere will hate them.

Actually, according to Roark's speech (and Rand's philosophy), we would have to assume that when the Wright Brothers flew their first plane, when Shakespeare wrote his plays and when the Founding Fathers established the United States, these men were objects of hatred and contempt. Why? Because, according to Ayn Rand, brilliant people such as herself who do amazing things are always hated and opposed by us nitwits.

When Gov. Mitt Romney made his infamous "47 percent" statement, he might as well have been channeling Ayn Rand. What Romney tried to convey to his donors was this: "We who are rich obviously stand way above those ordinary Americans, the 47 percent. They resent us, they accept government handouts and they will never vote for me."

One point that neither Gov. Romney nor Paul Ryan has spent time discussing is the fact that Ayn Rand herself was one of the 47 percenters. After spending almost her entire life denouncing Social Security and Medicare as government handouts designed for losers and hangers on, she wound up relying on both of these programs in her old age.

Sometimes Rand's glorification of selfishness took a truly chilling turn. When a young man named William Hickman, raped, murdered and dismembered a 12-year-old girl, Rand praised him as a brilliant individualist who, like herself, cared not at all for what ordinary citizens think. Yes, true.

OK, I don't want to slip into my bad old habits here. I'm trying to be as generous as I can to those with whom I disagree. But, please, can we make a deal?

I will try hard to be as open to compromise as I reasonably can, and I only ask that my Republican friends finally return Ayn Rand's "philosophy" to the trash heap of history where it belongs.

[ Robert L. Moore, a native of Lakeland, is a professor of anthropology at Rollins College in Winter Park and director of international affairs for the college's Hamilton Holt School. E-mail: rlmoore2647@yahoo.com. Blog: www.cultureworld21c.blogspot.com. ]

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